Creia could hear tension in Rain’s voice, but he didn’t question her. For now, they needed to get the men to the Mikana clinic. He reached forward and swept Nylek into his arms, freeing the smaller man from the burden of trying to support the massive warrior. They started back toward the kingdom as fast as they could and as they approached, Creia called out to Theia.
“Get the doctors,” he called. “Tell them to get to the clinic. These men need help.”
They rushed through the gate and into the kingdom, heading directly toward the clinic that rested in the center. He carefully lowered Nylek to one of the beds and turned to watch them help Kyven into place. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Athan back out of the clinic and start running toward the homes at the back of the kingdom. The Denynso king backed away as the doctors came into the room and headed for the two wounded men, then turned to Ivy.
“How is Maxim?” he asked.
Ivy nodded.
“He’s well,” she said. “He’s gotten through the battles without serious injury.”
“That’s good to hear. I am surprised to see you here instead of with him there.”
Ivy looked down, her eyes brimming with tears.
“He sent me here,” she said. “He wants to keep me safe.”
He knew that there was more to it than just that Maxim didn’t want her on the dangerous planet. She had already been engaged in battle with them. He knew that she was capable of taking care of herself, or could at the very least remain out of the way. Maxim needed her like the Denynso needed their mates, and Creia couldn’t imagine him sending her away without a good reason. Before he could ask anything else, she looked back up at him, her eyes suddenly clear and stern.
“Did you gather all of the supplies that he asked you to?” she asked.
Creia nodded.
“Most of them,” he said. “We brought the vehicles from the orchard and have some supplies from the Denynso compound. Ellora hasn’t given us permission yet to go into the war room to get the weapons that Maxim described. She doesn’t want to even talk to us. It’s like she’s trying to ignore that the war is even happening.”
“She can’t do that,” Ivy said. “Maxim needs those weapons. We aren’t going to be able to get through this with just the supplies that they have. Even when the others arrive from Earth, there aren’t going to be enough weapons or rations to support them. She can’t just not allow them to get what we need.”
“I can do as I please.”
Creia saw Ivy whip around to face Ellora where she stood at the door to the clinic. The woman looked angry and drawn, but there was a sadness in her eyes that was impossible to ignore.
“Ellora,” Ivy said, taking a step toward her.
“Where is my son?” she asked.
Creia stepped out of the way so that she could see Kyven lying on the bed further into the clinic. She immediately pushed past him, rushing to the side of the bed and leaning over her son. She took his head and reached forward to touch the side of his face.
“Kyven,” she said softly. “It’s Mama. I’m here.”
Kyven’s eyes opened and smiled at his mother.
“I’m alright,” he said. “I’m healing. It wasn’t serious.”
“It was serious,” Emerie said from the other side of the bed. “The Meldor nearly killed you, and we don’t know what kind of toxins it had on its claws. That’s why Maxim sent you back here.”
“I should be there with him,” he said. “I should be fighting alongside him, not lying in this bed.”
“You can’t be there with him,” Emerie said. “You aren’t in any condition to be fighting. You need to recover, and when you do, you can be of good use to him.”
“Listen to her, son,” Ellora said sternly. “She’s right. You might want to be with your brother and I’m sure that he wants you to be with him, but if you are injured, there’s no way that you are going to be able to give him the support that he needs. You will be in more danger and you will put the rest of them in danger as well. If you stay here and focus on recuperating, you will be strong enough to fight, though I wish that you wouldn’t.”
“Why?” Kyven asked, shifting as if trying to sit up. “Why shouldn’t I fight?” Emerie touched her hand to his shoulder and laid her mate back down onto the bed, but Kyven kept staring at his mother intently. “It’s like you don’t want us to win,” he said. “You don’t care what’s happening to all of us.”
“I do care, Kyven,” Ellora said, “but I have already lived so much of my life suffering the loss of my husband. I don’t want to lose you and your brother as well. All of this has happened before. There has been struggling and fighting for your entire life, and there will continue to be in all parts of the galaxy, in all parts of the universe throughout the rest of time. You don’t have to be a part of it.”
“There will be fighting,” Creia said, stepping forward, “but it won’t be like this. There is so much more happening than has ever happened before. There is so much more than any of us have ever known. This isn’t a grudge, Ellora. This isn’t something that we are fighting just for the sake of fighting.”
“How do you know that?” she asked. “You just came here. I have never seen you before now. How am I to know that I can trust what you have to say about this war? We were peaceful until your kind showed up here. We hadn’t seen war since the battle when Aegeus died. Then your warriors came here and suddenly everything has fallen apart around us.”
“Don’t talk to him that way,” Kyven said. “This is not Creia’s fault. He didn’t cause this. If it hadn’t been for the Denynso, we never would have learned what we have. We wouldn’t have found out the extent of what’s happening, and things would be much worse very soon. Besides, Papa…”
Athan stepped up to the side of the bed with a sound that silenced Kyven.
“You should rest now,” he said. “The doctors will take care of you and Emerie will bring you something to eat soon. Ellora, you should go back home for now. They need good food and drinks to restore their strength.”
Creia saw Ellora look down at her son with questions in her eyes. It was obvious that she knew he had more to say and he waited for her to ask, but she didn’t. She straightened slowly, releasing Kyven’s hand as she went, and then looked at Athan and nodded.
“Alright,” she said. She lifted her eyes to Emerie. “Come to my house later and get food for these men.”
“I will,” Emerie said.
Creia watched as Athan carefully place a hand in the of Ellora’s back and guided her away from the clinic. He turned back to Kyven and looked down at him.
“What were you going to say about your father?” he asked.
“He’s still alive,” Kyven said. “He didn’t die in that battle.”
“Are you sure?” Creia asked.
Kyven nodded.
“Ryan told us himself. At least until then, he was still alive.”
“He’s been holding him all these years?” the king asked.
“Yes,” Kyven said. “They captured him during that battle and he has had him since. I can’t imagine what he’s been doing to him.”
“I can,” Creia said, his mind immediately flashing back to the horrific time that he had spent captive by the Valdicians, his very thoughts controlled by Ryan as he was forced to stare into the screen attached to his head for hours at a time. Starved and tortured, he had barely lived, and he had been held only a brief time. “Did he say that he would keep him alive?” he asked.
Kyven shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He wants me and Maxim, though. Maybe if we’re able to keep fighting and can resist him, that will keep him alive.”
“If he wants you and Maxim, Aegeus isn’t safe. He knows where you are and that he can get to you. That’s enough to make it no longer necessary for him to keep your father around. If he decides that Aegeus has become too much trouble, or that he doesn’t need him anymore, or ev
en just that he wants to be as vindictive as possible, he will kill your father without a second thought. We need to get to him as quickly as we can if we want to keep him alive.”
“The group needs rest for tonight,” Kyven said. “We can’t simply go back.”
“I know,” Creia said. “There is still preparation to be done, but now that you are all here, you can help. We’ll do everything that we can to gather what we’ll need, and then we’ll go back. We can only hope that Maxim will be able to hold them off on his own until we get back, or that the rest of the group will make it to Penthos in time to help him. This has to end.”
He started toward the door to the clinic and heard Kyven call after him.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I need to go talk to Ellora,” he said. “Maxim gave instructions for what we needed to do to get ready for this war. I remember fighting alongside your father when we were young. I know the importance of the weapons that he collected. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t know that something was going to happen, if he didn’t have a plan already in motion. She needs to let us access to war room.”
“No,” Kyven said. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” Creia asked. “We don’t have time to wait for her to decide that she is going to accept what’s happening. We can’t give the power of the future of the galaxy to her and her denials.”
“I know,” Kyven said, “but she won’t listen to you. Let Athan talk to her. She doesn’t trust anyone like she trusts Athan. Give him time. Do whatever else you can to get everyone ready, but let him talk to her.”
“Alright,” Creia said, “but I can’t just give them endless time. We have to prepare. We have to get to them.”
He turned and left the clinic, walking out into the growing evening with too much energy and anticipation to even think about sleeping. There had to be something else that he could do. Until they were on the ship heading back to Penthos, he wouldn’t be able to allow himself to stop or to rest.
Chapter Three
Jonah stepped into the infirmary as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to disturb anyone who was sleeping inside. Though they had made the decision to stay on their own, he felt strangely responsible for the wounded hybrids and pregnant women who remained in the infirmary. Before Pyra left he had helped the women move into the original infirmary, joining them all together so that they could be safe and secure together. It made Jonah feel more comfortable knowing that they were in the same space, protected simply by merit of being closer to one another. Being out of sight of others was when they were in the most danger, and it was important to him that he do everything that he could to help keep them as safe as he could while he was alone with them on Earth. He didn’t know what he would be able to do for them if further danger did arise, but for then he could at least offer his presence.
Everyone inside seemed to be resting comfortably and he stepped out, closing the door as gently behind him as he could. He went back into the chamber where he had slept since they first arrived in the abandoned medical building and settled onto his bed. The others had been gone for only a few hours, and the reality of the situation was beginning to settle in for Jonah. He had been completely confident about the decision that he was making when he told Pyra that he was going to stay behind to look further into the medical files while the others went to Penthos, but now it was truly sinking in that the rest of those from Uoria had gotten onto that shuttle, leaving him behind to handle whatever might happen on his own. Though he knew that they were doing what they needed to do just as he was doing what he needed to do, it was also unnerving to know that he couldn’t just turn to them if something else happened.
Jonah’s hand settled onto the stack of medical files beside his bed and he felt a slight shock of energy move through his palm, reminding him of why he had decided to stay, of how pressing it was for him to remain behind so that he could try to understand what could have happened so many years before that could have had an impact that was still lingering now. He didn’t understand what it could possibly be that would make the doctor not just leave his file behind, but to close the door to the examination room and apparently walk away, leaving that space untouched and unchanged even as the rest of the medical building continued to operate and was then closed down. Why didn’t anyone open the door? Why didn’t anyone question why the doctor never used the examination room again? Why didn’t they look at it or take the things out of it when they were closing the medical building down in preparation to build the new section of the hospital.
A thought suddenly occurred to him and Jonah sat up straighter. The new building. Why would they build the new building around the old medical facility? Eden and the other human women had told him that they had planned to replace the old University for several years before they actually got started on the construction. All the other buildings were completely leveled so that they could build the new facilities in their places. They even built a new research hospital on the other side of the campus, establishing a much larger and more advanced facility for medical research and treatment for people who studied at the University as well as the other programs that used the campus as their headquarters, such as the department that bore Nyx 23. It didn’t make sense that of all the buildings that they would keep, they would choose to preserve an old, outdated hospital ward that they would seal completely within the laboratory so that it wasn’t just inaccessible, but fully forgotten until now.
The thought brought a strange feeling to Jonah’s stomach. He knew that this was so much more than they could have imagined. The further that they thought that they went, the closer that they thought they were getting to finally laying the conflict to rest, the more and more it seemed to unravel, revealing further and further layers. He thought of those who had left the basement on their way to the transportation bay so that they could get to Penthos. He hoped that they had made it and were on their way, but he knew deep in his chest that there was a possibility that they hadn’t survived the short but treacherous journey from the laboratory building to the vehicles that would take them off of Earth and back to the nearly barren planet. There was also a possibility that they had gotten part of the way there and then encountered the Valdicians or more of the hybrids and were captured, taken prisoner and forced into another area of Ryan’s compound of torture. This, Jonah thought, was likely a far worse possibility than even a brutal and bloody death in battle.
Jonah looked down at his hand on the files again. He needed to understand what happened, not just for him but for every person whose name appeared in these files. Their lives had all been taken, stolen from them, by something. Even those of them who had survived no longer had the lives that they thought that they were going to, and no longer had the potential to do what they thought they would do or be with the families, friends, and partners with whom they imagined they would spend their lives. He could still remember what it was like as they were preparing for the Nyx 23 mission. It had been the most thrilling time in his life, so filled with hope and anticipation. The entire reason that he had joined the department was so that he would be able to make a difference. Even though the program was designed primarily for research and recognizance, he had felt deep within him that it was going to give him the opportunities that he desired to really make a difference.
Nyx 23 had been the first chance that they had to do something truly impactful. They had done seemingly endless research and gone on a few missions, but none of them carried the weight and significance of what they had planned for the then-unknown and unnamed planet that they knew was harboring an illegal prison colony. This colony had been such a severe and blatant breech of the intergalactic agreements that at that time had only recently been made. Jonah had been one of the first people to start suspecting that the colony existed. The planet had seemed unoccupied, and according to the government and even the rest of the department itself, it was. In fact, when it was first found and identified as an inhabita
ble planet, some companies put in applications to receive permits to establish and build it as a tourist attraction. Jonah’s department had been instrumental in tying these applications up so that they wouldn’t be able to go through until after they made their mission. The last thing that they needed was for tourist companies to arrive on a planet that was being used illegally by a cruel and vicious species to imprison another.
Despite the severity of what was happening on what was now known as Penthos, and the horrors that they knew that they might face when they arrived, there had been such hope and even excitement when they prepared to leave. This was their chance. They were going to get to do something that not only helped others, but that changed the perspective of the entire galaxy. They might even be able to be the ones who decided how the planet was utilized after the prison colony was emptied and destroyed. Because so many of the original department hadn’t believed what they were saying when they told them their suspicions about the prison colony, Nyx 23 was developed in secret, and the plan for the mission had to be made away from the rest of the department. At the time, the goal was to protect their plans and their mission from others who would be able to stop them. Now, though, he wondered if they had truly made the right decision by remaining so secretive. By concealing everything that they were doing they ensured that they were able to put the mission together and leave without interference, but it also meant that it took longer for anyone to take note of the fact that they were missing, and then once they did realize that the crew and the experimental ship were gone, they had little information to go on in an effort to find them. Even the skeleton mission control that remained on Earth only knew that they were traveling to the planet now known as Penthos. They would have no way of knowing what happened to them, just as the crew itself had no way of imagining what they would encounter when they left Earth behind.
The Alien's Glimpse (Uoria Mates IV Book 5) Page 2
